Vendor Performance Pain Points and How to Address Them
Buying organizations know that accurately assessing vendor performance is a critical part of their mission. Without clear visibility on vendor activities, it’s impossible for organizations to know which suppliers are delivering on their obligations, much less calculate if the investment in the vendor is returning good value for the buyer.
In this article we’ll review some of the most common pain points associated with vendor performance management and how to address them using a modular solution.
Lack of tools and/or processes to grade vendors
One of the major roadblocks to effective vendor performance management is a lack of tools or formal processes to track and evaluate vendors. Without these tools, there are few reliable ways for an organization to track the progress of vendors as they work on a project or supply goods and services. What’s more, without a way to qualify work being done or goods supplied, buyers are left in the dark as to the true value of a vendor’s contribution.
Vendor performance management solutions provide buying organizations with what they need to assess vendor performance, including vendor scorecards that can be customized as needed and analytic tools to dig deep and compare vendor performance over time.
High cost of monitoring
Manually monitoring and logging the performance of multiple vendors across a project is resource-intensive and prone to error. Having staff reach out to department end users or vendors, process responses and follow-up for more information is costly and can lead to organizations cutting corners on performance monitoring in the name of ‘getting things done.’
Modular vendor performance management allows purchasing administrators to easily track the performance of multiple vendors from a single location, and access the critical information they need about a vendor at a glance. By centralizing the performance monitoring and management process, processes are streamlined and costs reduced, improving accountability at every step.
Timely communication
Keeping in touch and engaged with vendors is challenging and can quickly become unmanageable if vendors aren’t able to provide timely responses to buyer inquiries. Even in the best of circumstances, delayed responses can slow down entire projects and prevent important issues from being addressed.
For this reason, the ability to create and send automated reminders to vendors about important dates and approaching deadlines is vital to efficient procurement. Buying organizations need a way to contact all vendor stakeholders quickly in order to keep things moving forward. In addition to the efficiency gains realized through the use of vendor performance management, performance management modules are accessible from anywhere with an internet connection, making it easy for purchasing professionals to track performance on the go.
When it comes to modern procurement, assessment and management of vendor performance is essential to success – and the best way to achieve these goals is through the use of a vendor performance management solution.
Find out how BidNet Direct can help your government organization today! 
